13th September, 2018

It's the 2nd week of school, and though we're all somewhat bushed by the early mornings, it's so good to be back to somewhat normal life.

Nick seems to be enjoying his Funeral Director program at Humber. It was great to see his eyes light up when he picked up his embalming textbook. "Check this out - this dude blew his head off with a shotgun, and this is how you put him back together for an open-casket funeral. Wicked!". Someone's got to do this, I guess!

Nick's still in treatment. This is to be expected, as his doctors did not feel that he could be sent into remission this winter. However, the treatment is relatively sustainable, and occurs every 21 days in hospital. The initial plan was to have him receive another hit of chemo at day 8, but as the day 1 dose really knocks Nick's platelets down, the day 8 dose was impossible. Nick's oncologist doesn't seem overly concerned by this, so we're not freaking out about it. The mid-July brain bleed which lead to seizures and admission to the ICU is an indication of what could happen if Nick's platelets drop too low. 

Vincent is doing very well. He's living with his friends Peter and David, working part time at McDonalds, but making way more money doing freelance drumming on Fiverr.com: musicians sent him tracks by email, he mixes his drumming with these tracks and sends them back, sometimes commanding $100/song. If it's an easy song, this can take less than 10 minutes! Best of all, he's loving his courses at Western. This first year is a general arts/science program, but he intends to specialize in neuroscience and/or AI in second year. 

My mom's friend Donja, who had her heart transplant at the end of June, has finally recovered sufficiently to come live with us (for three weeks) starting tomorrow! Guess we'll have to move the puppy's crate out of her room. 

Tanja's dad, Richard, has been let out of the hospital following his last harrowing bout of pneumonia, which was accompanied by a minor brain bleed due to low platelets (see above), and which looked rather like a stroke. He seems to be on the mend, but is still very frail. 

We're moving my dad from Sudbury to London in November. I'm still in the process of finding an apartment for him. We'd like him in Byron, but this seems unattainable right now. I'm looking at a couple places in Cherryhill tomorrow.